162+.

There were just seven weeks left in the season, and the Rangers, who two weeks earlier sat eight games out in the West, had won 12 of 17 since a 21-5 disaster at the hands of the Yankees.

There were seven weeks left, and someone asked Jon Daniels during the Q&A portion of our Newberg Report Night event how confident he was that Texas could hold on after actually climbing all the way back into a Wild Card position.

Always understated and chronically appropriate, JD paused. “I know everyone is all caught up in the Wild Card race,” he said without a change in expression. “Man, I think we’re gonna win the division.”

The room erupted.

I asked JD if it was OK if I led my report the next morning with that comment. No problem, he said.

The next morning he said he’d reconsidered, and if it was cool he preferred that I not put that out there. So I didn’t.

I didn’t ask this time.

There have been defining moments this season — and we all hope the true signature moments have yet to happen, of course — but it’s been one of those years in which you can’t really say one or two players put the team on their backs, or that one impossible comeback win or crazy win streak changed everything. It’s been a battle, a battle out of a corner, and one of the most exhilarating sports seasons I can remember.

With lots to go, obviously.

The prospect of Eric Nadel opening the Game 159 broadcast with the chillbump-raising words “Well, it has come to this” was, for so long this year, virtually impossible to imagine.

The Thursday lineup featured a Rule 5 pick that Houston didn’t want to reserve a minor league spot for on its off-season 40-man roster, a first baseman who was acquired for next to nothing in August, and a left fielder who was paid a lot of money to go away five months ago by the team in the other dugout.

In a game decided by two runs, Josh Hamilton — the man whose dropped flyball in Oakland was emblematic of the Rangers’ 2012 collapse — saved one run and drove in another, eliminating from the division race the team that was so desperate to get rid of him in April that they took care of almost all of his game check last night, paying him to make that impossible catch and drive in the game’s final run.

It wasn’t the same as freezing A-Rod to end the ALCS, or the Mavs finally taking down the Heat, but Josh Hamilton (20 days post-knee surgery) accounting for two runs in Texas 5, Los Angeles 3, helping send his team to the playoffs and making his primary payor’s playoff path a little steeper, was pure sports poetry.

New Mariners GM Jerry Dipoto, who was in the same role with the Angels when they rush-delivered Hamilton to Texas earlier this year, on the role Los Angeles owner Arte Moreno’s played when the club gave him $125 million over five years in the first place, weeks after he’d dropped that lazy fly in Oakland: “That was his decision to make.”

So, apparently, was the decision to excommunicate Hamilton, and essentially pay him $110 million for two years of baseball.

Two years of Angels baseball, that is.

Mike Scioscia after the game on Hamilton’s grab of Shane Victorino’s second-inning smash at the fence with men on first and third: “I’m not surprised. He’s a good left fielder with a lot of range.”

Hamilton and Elvis Andrus nearly threw Albert Pujols at the plate, but the something-year old, running like he was chest deep in a swimming pool, narrowly beat the relay.

It still really wasn’t a signature moment for this club, in a game that had less urgency attached to it for Texas than it did for LA, but it was awesome. The Rangers are in the playoffs — thanks in large part to a beast effort out of Derek Holland and 2.2 scoreless innings from the bullpen — and with one more win over these final three, or one Houston loss, they bypass the Wild Card Game and earn a berth in the ALDS, traveling to either Toronto or Kansas City to get their post-season rolling.

According to one of those playoff odds generators, the Rangers had a 1 percent chance to win the AL West as of July 22.

And a 4 percent chance as of August 26.

It’s not 100 percent this morning, but it’s just about as close as you can get.

A 95-loss team whose manager had quit went into the winter needing a new skipper and lots more than that.

And then lost its ace in spring training.

Lost its number two starter after one inning.

Didn’t have its number three starter or its number four starter for the first half of the season.

Had its closer cough up his job, leaving the role to a pitcher the club had claimed off waivers a year and a half earlier.

Finished April with the worst record in its 44-year history.

Had a $120 million shortstop and $130 million right fielder who were being labeled as untradeable throughout the first half because nobody wanted to talk instead about actual production.

Still owned Jurickson Profar, somewhere.

Optioned its standout rookie second baseman after a month because he’d become a helpless sophomore.

Stuck that Rule 5 pick in the leadoff slot.

Had what amounted to a mediocre catcher tandem — and then lost both 31-year-olds to extended injury.

Got backwards steps from the center fielder and set-up man it was counting on to take the next step.

Started 12 left fielders.

Gave 15 starts to Wandy Rodriguez, and seven to Ross Detwiler.

That team is returning to the playoffs.

With head-to-head confrontations the past week with the Astros and Angels, I wasn’t big on focusing on any Magic Numbers, but the more I think about it, this club that isn’t defined by one player, or two, is one whose identity and whose success this incredible season should be credited mostly to two men.

For me, the two magic numbers as far as the 2015 Texas Rangers are concerned are the 28 on the manager’s back, and the 162+ that belongs on the GM’s.